


I Can't Help Falling in Love With You

by Skyler10



Series: Verse as in Music [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Nostalgia, Romance, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose watches Tentoo sing their baby to sleep and it brings back a memory of the first time he almost-nearly-kind-of said those three little words for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Help Falling in Love With You

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn’t help myself. I’ve been meaning to write this for a while and it ended up as a sequel to Normal Human Life. What can I say, I am putty in the hands of Rose+Tentoo. Playing with tenses here, hoping it helps provide some separation.

He’s swaying and shushing the mewling bundle in his arms, and it is all one-month postpartum Rose can do to keep from getting over-emotional. Again. She sighs and rests her exhausted body against the doorframe. The open door and a nightlight in the corner provide the only light in the room and she’s been purposefully quiet, so she isn’t surprised he hasn’t noticed her presence. Even with his remaining Time Lord spidey-senses, he’s nearly as tired as she is now that they’ve been at this for a month.

Being parents, that is.

She remembers their conversation from her second trimester, which seems like ages ago now.

_I just want to be a good dad._

_Of course you will be. Of course._

She was so sure then because she loved him with all her heart, knew him best and trusted him implicitly, but she never could have imagined how it would feel to _watch_ him being a dad. To walk in from a short trip out to find them both asleep on the couch with their baby curled up so peacefully against his single human heart. Safe and protected in the arms of her part-alien father. She didn’t know, back when she kissed away his fears, what it would be like to hear him tell her how beautiful she was, how strong she was, how capable she was when she felt quite the opposite. She had no concept then of how hard it would be, how much it would stretch them, how they would have to cling to one another to get through this. She had no idea at four or five months along how it would make her heart swell to hear him humming, then softly singing their daughter to sleep.

The familiar melody pulls her from her current line of wonder and into a much deeper, further set of memories as she recognizes the tune. She isn’t conscious of the tears spilling down her cheeks or that the baby had stopped crying or that he is swaying in place at the window, staring out at the stars of a universe that is not their birthplace.

\-----

The lullaby transports them back to a previous life, another existence, an entire dimension away. The night he almost, kind of, sort of told her he loved her for the very first time. In his typically Doctor-ish way.

The ballroom glittered in every detail. She tilted her head back to take it all in: enormous chandeliers, mountainously high ceiling, elaborately decorated tables, swirling swooshing skirts and bowing gentlemen. A string quartet played from a raised platform, but she didn’t expect to know any of the songs. This was not her home planet or era, after all. In fact, it was just one night in just one of the many New New Yorks of one of the Great and Bountiful Human Empires that had spread across time and space.

But this was not just an evening of fun on alien, future soil. She was 90 percent sure this was a date. A real date. Romance being the primary purpose.

There was still that niggling 10 percent of her that needed the Doctor to verbalize it. To confirm they had moved beyond friends after their dramatic experience on Krop Tor, that they certainly were together after the Olympics and that Elton’s love for a girl-in-concrete had made them sure – storm or battles or brief human life be damned – that their time together counted as forever. At least in each other’s hearts.

The Doctor smiled and took her hand, leading her out to the dance floor without a word. She bit her bottom lip to hide how much she wanted this, wanted him. They tried to keep up with the quick steps of the local variation on the waltz, their mutual laughter at their missteps only caused them to miss more, drawing more laughter (and several stares from the stuffy formal crowd).

Finally, the musicians relented and transitioned into a slower, simple Old Earth tune. Elvis. Rose sighed in contentment as the Doctor pulled her in closer and nuzzled her hair. They swayed to the gentle rhythm until the Doctor pulled back. Hoping it was to kiss her and fearing it was to run away from the intimacy of the moment, Rose held her breath as she met his eyes. She was met with neither, per se, but it sent her heart skipping nonetheless.

Adoration and vulnerability and need and frustration flickered through his expression, emotions that she alone knew him well enough to read.

“Doctor…” she tried, but he stopped her by pressing his forehead to hers. Their noses brushed and he cupped her cheek, angling her lips to meet his in the lightest, most chaste of kisses. She wouldn’t let him get away that easily, however. She threaded her fingers through his hair and pressed him to her for a kiss with much more confidence than she felt.

“There’s something…” he whispered against her lips. “Rose, I…”

She waited for a bit, wondering briefly if he was about to confess what she thought he was going to. She had been holding back from those three little words, wanting him to say it first if he was ever going to, since he intentionally had avoided such a declaration in the past.

“I know,” she reassured. Surely he knew that she knew? Wasn’t he aware that she felt it, even if it hurt him too much to say it with such a difference in their lifespans? She swallowed as the words “the curse of the Time Lords” flitted to her memory from last year’s discussion after meeting Sarah Jane.

“I want to,” he said after a minute. She glanced up in surprise. “Only I can’t seem to… It just won’t come out. You’d think with this gob I could say such tiny words, but it seems like every time I try they… get stuck.”

“It’s alright,” she soothed, rubbing the base of his neck with her fingertips.

“I’m such a coward,” he self-chastised.

“No. No, you’re the bravest man I’ve ever known.”

“You deserve so much better.”

“Shh, don’t talk like that. I only want you. You’re stuck with me, remember? Or have you forgotten what I told you this morning as we watched that sunrise?”

“Forever,” he choked out. He drew her close again and kissed her breathless. Rose wasn’t even sure they were dancing anymore. She laid her head on his chest as she caught her breath and felt before she heard him humming along with the music.

“What if I sing it to you? Does that still count?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” she sighed in anticipation and nodded against him in case she was too quiet and he hadn’t heard. He sang softly in her ear so only she could hear.

“Take my hand, take my whole life too. ‘Cause I can’t help falling in love with you.”

She reached up for his cheek and brushed her thumb across his freckled skin before rewarding his declaration with a thorough snog. Neither of them were aware they had swayed to the side of the dance floor near a table of older couples. When the song ended, the quartet took a break and the spell was broken. Rose and the Doctor separated from the kiss and froze, arms still around each other. On the inside, emotional walls waited, ready to be carefully reconstructed at the slightest hint from the other. However, they hadn’t accounted for their elderly audience. The grandmotherly women sighed in nostalgia as the grandfatherly men clapped. One even let out a whistle. It was barely noticed by the rest of the crowded ballroom, but the couple in question blushed and nodded their acknowledgement. The tension between them shattered as they laughed and ran to the TARDIS. He didn’t even need to say that all-important, life-altering word anymore. She just knew from the way he stuck his hand out.

_Run.  
_

She only stopped him when they were home, alone together in their time machine. He was already pushing buttons on the controls, ready to set the groan of the time rotor into motion, when he noticed she was still panting and leaning against the closed doors. Her eyes twinkled as she caught his, a grin breaking out slow and wide as she approached him.

“Doctor, that song?”

“Mhmm?” He breathed in her perfume as she turned him and wrapped herself in his arms.

“Me too.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s very good to hear, Rose Tyler.”

She giggled and nuzzled his shoulder one more time before heading off to bed.

She knew their lives would never be ordinary or years evenly matched. She was certain they could never have what her mum hinted at. They might never move past the hugs and hand holding and snogging. But she didn’t care at the moment. Love for him in whatever form it could express itself swelled within her and she wouldn’t dwell. Not tonight. She refused to be haunted by fear of the future after that song.

 -----

The older, wiser Rose leaning against a doorframe in a dark house in another universe remembers that night and it’s all she can do to hold back the torrent of emotions, to keep from losing herself in what has been since then and what she thought was gone forever and this which she thought was impossible. Gratitude and loss, pain endured and joy realized, mourning past and the excruciating reality of each passing linear non-timey-wimey second all swirl within her.

Some day they will be back in their ship. New TARDIS. New Doctor. New baby. New Rose even. Because as much as she remembers of that ballroom and the events that followed – a bazoolium purchased, a visit to her mum, a white wall, a cannon, a desperate search across dimensions, a reality bomb, a metacrisis – it has all changed her too. She is not that blushing girl, ready for a new planet every day. She is a new mother, at the end of her physical limits, but at her core, happy for the moment with just this one planet, this one house, this one adventure day after day. The galaxies will be there, she knows, when they are ready. It won’t be long.

As if sensing her thoughts, he turns around. He and their sleeping daughter are bathed in moonlight, a perfect image of her wandering thoughts. The baby is laid near their bed in her little bassinet. She will be up again in a wink, so Rose follows her husband into bed, resisting the urge to drag him into the next room to share aloud the reason for her drying tear stains.

He isn’t so easily deterred though. He guides her fingers to his temple as they curl up next to each other and raises an eyebrow. It’s an offering, a silent invitation. She can’t help the upturn of her lips as she pushes with practiced ease into his mind, replaying their memory of a song from so long ago. He relaxes against her body and mind, flooding her with the words he was so hesitant to say then but can’t stop himself from saying now. The worries and frustrations of new parenthood slip away for just a moment and they hardly notice falling asleep as the lullaby plays just one more time through their bond.


End file.
